Life Is Like a Friends Episode (Yet Again)

Blog readers, life is inexplicably odd. Make that odd, strange and unpredictable.

I’ve often said that there are many things in life that I will never understand until I get to heaven. I even keep a mental list of questions that I’ll ask God when I get there so it won’t drive me mad wanting to understand why right now.

Just over a week after we had our meeting in the Principal’s office (er, Starbucks), we’ve been given a Friends moment.

In this case, episode 207: The One Where Ross Finds Out. Cut to the restaurant. Rachel calls Ross to tell him she’s over him. And the Hayley-life-mimicking-Friends line is:

…and that, my friend, is what we call closure.

We were already feeling a good deal of closure after our wonderful conversation with our pastor. We realized we weren’t really angry anymore. That was a miracle and a relief!

But then the unpredictable happened on Tuesday: I read about a significant part of our story that we’d been keeping private for so long, agonizing over, in the news.

Absolutely shocking.

It wasn’t a secret anymore. And the response of people reading it confirmed that we weren’t inflexible, culture-shocked quitter wash-outs overly concerned with proper accounting over the “real work” of ministry (yes, all of those charges were leveled at us).

What we said was wrong, tried to fix with proper procedures and eventually quit over because those with the ability to make changes wouldn’t listen to us, is actually wrong. Folks who gave us poor-you-why-did-you-come-back looks are now saying, “Wow, it’s worse than we could have imagined. How could this happen?”

We’re not pariahs.

We don’t have to justify why we quit for reasons of professional integrity.

We no longer have to explain why it’s not right to do the wrong thing for the right reasons.

And that my friends, is what we call closure.

If you are interested in reading the other side of our full story, click on the following links:

Please know that even though we are marveling at the revelation of truth while we’re still alive to see it, we are grieving over the impact this news could potentially have on many of our dear friends with the organization who have done nothing wrong, particularly in an economic climate where giving to charities and ministries is already down.